Last modified: 2015-07-04 by rob raeside
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This flag (without star) was used during the Rebellion led by Louis-Joseph
Papineau in 1837-1838 to establish a republic in the by-then Lower Canada,
which corresponds to the Province of Quebec now.
Michel Simard, 30 September 1998
I was under the impression, though, that the French of Lower Canada used a
horizontal tricoleur of green-white-red with a yellow star in the upper hoist
on the green stripe in the early 1800s, and that the Parti Patriote simply
adopted it without changes. The flag you describe has two stars in the central
(white) stripe. I was obviously mistaken about the first, but do you know the
date that the Parti Patriote adopted their flag in the one-star form?
Steve Kramer, 12 October 1998
They never did ; this is an innovation of the 1960s by some Quebecois
nationalists and still used today. The ones with two and later three stars
(the third for Halifax) were used during battle, so in 1837-1838. The plain
tricolor was first cited in 1832.
Luc Baronian, 12 October 1998
These flags were displayed at an assembly on June 1, 1837. They were designed by François Beaudoin according to descriptions. The colours are unknown; Jaume imagined them (except for the 3 traditional colours of green-white-red, of course).
The penultimate one was displayed on June 1 with the other ones. The last
one is the flag that the Patriotes used at the Battle of Saint-Eustache in
1837 (or 38 ?). The original is exposed at the Musée du Chateau Ramezay in
Montreal
Luc-Vartan Baronian, 19 March 1997
This is a flag described in J-P Bernard, Rebellion de 1837-1838, p. 128.
This flag was flown in November 1838 in Napierville during Robert Nelson second declaration of independence of Lower Canada of which he was declared President. The description only says "a big white flag with three stars".
Starred flags seemed quite popular at the time in Canada, I have posted at least three other Lower Canadian starred flags that I remember and are still on my pages.
One last flag that I wanted to mention was a flag cited in a letter by Chevalier de Lorimier on the eve of his execution at the Montreal Prison :
Le sang et les larmes versées sur l'autel de la liberté arrosent aujourd'hui les racines de l'arbre qui fera flotter le drapeau marqué des deux étoiles des Canadas.
(The blood and tears shed for liberty waters today the roots of the tree that shall hoist the flag marked with the two stars of the Canadas)
Ref.: Chevalier de Lorimier, Lettres d'un patriote condamné à mort, Montreal: Comeau & Nadeau, 1997.
According to the editor, those stars are blue. I wrote him a letter, asking him his source and am still waiting for a response.
This is probably not the flag of the Upper Canada reformists, unless
someone can confirm that their two stars were for the two colonies of Upper
and Lower Canada... (?)
Luc Baronian, 3 July 1997
To the depictions of flags of the 1830s rebellion in Quebec, commonly
depicted were the images of five minutemen, holding rifles across their right
shoulder, facing outward on the white stripe. The figures are depicted in
sketchy black against the white. One could note that this flag has been
adopted by ultra-nationalist Raymond Villeneuve and his group of sovereignists
as their emblem.
Brian Fitzgerald,. 8 March 1999